Providing subscribers with reliable Wi-Fi coverage and capacity in a medium to large sized home, using a single Access Point (AP), is a challenge. Many Wi-Fi users experience dead zones with little or no connectivity at fringe areas in the home. Operators are looking at multiple AP deployments in order to provide effective whole home coverage. In such scenarios, coordination between the APs in a home Extended Service Set (ESS) is required to effectively optimize many aspects of the network such optimal client association and radio resource optimization.
In an enterprise environment the WLAN Controller (WLC) is an essential part of the network and manages the inter-AP communication and coordination in a vendor-proprietary manner. In a home network, however, where there is no WLC, there are also no standards or even defined best practices about how multiple APs in a home ESS should communicate with each other. Thus AP coordination suffers or is non-functional.
Existing coordination technologies could allow Wi-Fi APs in a home Extended Service Set (ESS) network to exchange information, ensuring clients are connected to the best AP for that client without adversely affecting other clients. While all vendors agree on the issues involved in AP Coordination, and some have implemented partial solutions, none have a complete solution. Standard 11v based client steering remains one of the main issues frustrating most vendors.
There is not a currently defined standard protocol that will solve the AP Coordination problem and there is value in defining a standard protocol or set of protocols that provide coordination of client associations and radio resources when multiple APs are deployed in a home.
Many Wi-Fi users' homes require more than one Wi-Fi Access Point (AP) for sufficient coverage. However, adding additional APs, which have been configured correctly and placed in an optimal location, can cause other wireless issues. For example, home ESS (Extended Service Set) networks can experience Wi-Fi client problems. One such client problem is a ‘sticky’ client or clients that do not roam optimally. Another client problem is where a client or clients unknowingly overload the serving AP even though there may be one or more underutilized APs in the vicinity. Due to the nature of Wi-Fi as a shared medium, these problems create a negative impact on the user experience of the other Wi-Fi clients on the network.
Home Wi-Fi users already expect to stream HD videos to multiple clients simultaneously from all areas of the house, and while moving around in the home, without interruptions. This has a high impact on the network in terms of the bandwidth consumed. Research also shows that Voice over Wi-Fi (VoWi-Fi) will be used extensively within the home networks due to the ubiquity and low cost of Wi-Fi. It is to be noted that, for optimal VoWi-Fi call quality, fast roaming, low latency and low jitter are important.